It`s a man`s world out on Route 33, the flat blacktop that runs by the freight tracks, a paradise for guys on the hunt for a good tractor or a saloon with a satellite dish. Marquees on wheels beckon from the shoulder-GUNS AMMO, CHIX SAL SANDWICHES-with letters dangling loose, so that any second you expect to see a vowel in the gravel.
What you don`t expect on a strip like this are commemorative blue ribbons tied to utility poles. In the raw wind, they whip fitfully for the late Lisa Bianco.
She used to drive Route 33 from Mishawaka every day, 10 miles east to her job at the Elkhart County Women`s Shelter. Although she clearly feared for her life, and said so, the women she counseled saw her as a symbol of strength, living proof that the system worked. She had managed to extricate herself from an abusive marriage, and later, when her former husband bound her and beat her, she had pressed charges.
”I bartered for my life yesterday,” she told the prosecutor`s office back in 1987, her face freshly swollen with purple wounds. ”I`m afraid if he does get ahold of me again, I`m not going to be able to talk him out of it.” So the state made an inmate out of her ex-husband, Alan Matheney, and Bianco made herself over. No longer the timid housewife, she became a public figure who urged other women to reject their abusers.
But a month ago, at age 29, Lisa Bianco became a murder victim, and Alan Matheney became an accused killer, charged with murder and burglary. Those who knew Bianco are bitterly pondering the vagaries of justice, the process by which a man locked up in a state prison three hours away could suddenly be awarded an eight-hour furlough without anyone honoring the former wife`s written request to be warned.
Experts see this case as symptomatic of a broad pattern of injustice.
”Lisa`s death undercuts people`s expectations of what happens when an abused woman breaks free,” says Diana Onley-Campbell of the Washington-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. ”She did all the right things that we tell women to do, and she still lost her life. Why didn`t her fear of him carry more weight with the system?”
In a brochure that Bianco authored on the eve of her death, she wrote that if a spurned abuser hunts you down, ”run outside-being out in public may provide protection. Scream-let the neighbors hear; you can use witnesses.”
On the afternoon of March 4, Lisa Bianco apparently followed her own counsel. Witnesses said they saw Bianco, clad in underwear, flee her house screaming, only to be beaten to death on the sidewalk with the butt of a shotgun.
That night Alan Matheney, 38, called police with an offer to surrender. He was picked up by an officer, who read Matheney his rights.
According to a police affidavit, Matheney then said, ”I assume that my ex-wife is dead.” He has since pleaded not guilty, and his attorney is weighing an insanity plea. A trial is scheduled for June; should Matheney be convicted on both counts, he could be sentenced to death.
The FBI estimates that in 1987, 1,500 American women-about four a day-were killed by spouses or boyfriends. Some in the field say the national toll is rising. Given such numbers, this brutal death in a South Bend suburb near the Michigan border, in Notre Dame country, may not seem unique. Indeed, the Pennsylvania State Police reported that 47 of the 179 women slain statewide in 1987 were killed by spouses or boyfriends.
But the murder of Lisa Bianco has resonated nationally because, unlike the overwhelming majority of abused women, she had opened the curtains on her own life. She spoke to community groups, worked with the county prosecutor, called in the media for reform. And she died not behind closed doors, like most victims, but on a public street, allegedly at the hands of a furloughed inmate. Her death came five months after a presidential election dominated in part by the image of furloughed Massachusetts killer Willie Horton.
Indiana`s new Democratic administration feared political fallout. Earlier this month Gov. Evan Bayh abolished the work-release program under which Matheney had qualified for a furlough and tightened eligibility for all furloughs, excluding virtually all violent offenders, including those jailed for domestic violence, according to a spokesman for the governor`s office.
Last month two officials of the Correctional Industrial Complex in Pendleton, near Indianapolis, were fired for not notifying Lisa Bianco that Matheney had been given a furlough.
Deadly departures
Most important, however, the Bianco case speaks to the issue most often invoked by casual observers: Why don`t these women just leave? Because, it appears, leaving may be more dangerous than staying. According to crime figures compiled by domestic-violence experts, more than 60 percent of women killed by their abusers die after they leave.
”What happened to Lisa Bianco means that we`re still asking the wrong question,” says author Ann Jones, a New York expert on domestic homicide.
”The question shouldn`t be, `Why don`t the women leave?` The real question should be, `Why don`t the men let them go?` ”
Casualty stories abound. Within a nine-day period in December, three women in Long Island, N.Y., all victims of physical abuse, were shot to death by their estranged husbands, all of whom committed suicide afterward. One victim`s family is suing county officials, alleging that protection measures were lax.
In Philadelphia three years ago, Elena Ortiz was shot to death by her estranged husband, Cecilio, who then killed himself. On several occasions, she had complained about him in court, and there were several warrants for his arrest.
But the sheriff`s office said it had lacked the resources for a vigorous manhunt, and the police had not logged the man`s past domestic offenses on their central computer, a policy that, in practice, served to underplay the danger at hand.
In Boston three years ago, Pamela Dunn, a battered wife who had left her husband, went to a judge for help; the judge told her that his court ”has a lot more serious matters to contend with.” Several months later the husband shot Dunn and tossed her body into a garbage dump. He was convicted of the killing.
Experts argue that abused women are most dependent on society once they finally leave the home. ”But when they do leave,” says Onley-Campbell,
”they can`t assume that the resources of society are there for the asking.”
Indeed, Bianco lived in a state where, in 1978, one prosecutor refused to file murder charges against a man who beat his wife to death and raped her as she lay dying. ”He didn`t mean to kill her,” said the prosecutor. ”He just meant to give her a good thumping.”
Marriage quickly soured
Bianco and Matheney were married in 1978. A plumbing contractor, Matheney was ”a perfect gentleman” at first, Bianco later told a friend, but the beatings soon began. Matheney, who talked with a local newspaper after his arrest for murder, denied ever beating Bianco, although he described life with her as ”a nightmare.”
Still, late one night in 1985, Bianco showed up at a shelter in South Bend. Sandy Money, a counselor who also worked as a probation officer, recalled: ”Her face was puffy. She had black eyes. Her mouth was all swollen. Her clothes were all torn. She sat there with her head down, scared to death, ashamed to be there. She wouldn`t even move out of her chair.”
Money finally broke the ice by telling Bianco about one abuse victim`s triumphant escape. After the woman had caught her husband ”with his umpteenth girlfriend,” Money told Bianco, she ”went into the bedroom when he was asleep, turned on the vacuum cleaner and put the nozzle right on his favorite body part . . . .” After that, he asked for a divorce.
Bianco began laughing and crying, recalls Money, ”and it was like opening up a whole kettle of fish. It was the first time she`d been able to talk to someone who wasn`t judging her.
By the end of 1985, she had divorced Matheney. He retaliated by kidnaping their two children, now 10 and 6. She filed a complaint, and he was arrested with the children in North Carolina. Free on bond back in Indiana, Matheney accosted his former wife in 1987. A visibly bruised Bianco recalled in a statement videotaped by county prosecutor Michael Barnes:
”Everything happened quickly. He unplugged the telephone, he pushed me down, ripped my blouse open, and came after me with several neckties. Sometime back, he had tried strangling me with a tie. . . . He was trying to wrap them around me. . . . He started hitting me . . . mostly on the back of my head with his fist. . . .
”I told him I didn`t want to die. He told me he was doing it because he loved me. He told me he was going to rape me. I decided I`d rather be submissive and go along with his wishes, because I didn`t want to be bothered anymore. . . . I had to save myself in any way I could. . . . I have to
(prosecute this time). If I don`t do something, it`s just going to happen again.”
Matheney received a five-year prison sentence for that attack and for the kidnaping. The rape charges were dropped. At a sentencing hearing, according to court records, attorney Michael Scopelitis explained his client to the judge: ”Mr. Matheney, I don`t know why, could never let go of this woman . . . just to call it love would be wrong. Although I`m sure that`s what Al perceives it as. I perceive it as an obsession. A love obsession. . . . It has not been healthy.”
A closed casket
One night last year, Bianco sat alone with Sandi Pack at the Elkhart County Women`s Shelter and confessed her fears. Pack, a corporate receptionist and shelter resident, had become dependent on Bianco for guidance. Bianco personified empowerment. Bianco had put Matheney away-he pleaded guilty-she`d gone back to school, and now she was the shelter counselor. But she never felt secure.
”It doesn`t matter what I do. I know he`s going to find me,” Bianco told Pack. ”But if I start running now, I know I`ll never stop, so I might as well stay here and help out.” Bianco made similar comments last year to another resident, Cheryl Kilgour. ”If I`m killed,” she told Kilgour, ”it`ll have to be a closed casket, because if he ever gets ahold of me, it`s not going to be a pretty sight.”
Kilgour also recalled the time last fall when Bianco told her that Matheney had phoned from prison: ”He said he was going to get out and kill her. I asked what she was gonna do about it. She said, `Watch me.` ” Kilgour saw her pick up the phone and call the prison, to report the threats against her life.
Model prisoner
But court records indicate that prison officials were pleased with Matheney`s behavior. He ”has a clear conduct record,” they wrote in December. ”Subject relates well and seems to have adjusted . . . very well.” He was deemed a good candidate for ”regulated community assignment.” They said they foresaw ”no mental impairments that would hinder his ability to function in society.”
Some law enforcement officials had even opposed jail for Matheney on principle. A consultant to the state probation department noted in a 1987 letter: ”As for the (rape charge, which was dropped), they very possibly could have been having a `wonderful social affair` with sex involved. . . . Now the victim appears to be using the criminal-justice system to whip her husband to death. Ugh!”
In January, Bianco got a call from Matheney`s mother, who informed her that Matheney apparently was eligible for a day`s pass. Bianco called prosecutor Mike Barnes, who called the prison. The pass was canceled. Barnes now says the prison agreed to inform his office, in advance, of any furlough. Bianco also asked in writing for a warning.
On March 3, Bianco phoned Sandy Money and said, ”I finally feel safe for the first time since he`s been in. They promised to contact me. So now I know, if I don`t hear anything, that he`s still there.”
Mom couldn`t stop him
On the morning of March 4, without notice to Bianco, Matheney was released into the custody of his mother. He`d been told to remain in the Indianapolis area, 150 miles south of Mishawaka. But Matheney took the wheel and headed north on the barren expanse of Route 31, beneath a vast sky, past Jesus billboards and endless fields of freshly turned soil. His mother, in a statement, said she felt powerless to stop him.
Three hours later Matheney dropped her off at her home in Granger, north of Mishawaka, and drove to a friend`s house. The friend later told police that his shotgun had been stolen.
Early that afternoon, according to a police affidavit, 10-year-old Brooke Matheney saw her father break into her home, shattering the glass in the back door. She watched him point ”a long bar” at her mother. Bianco screamed for Brooke to call police.
The daughter fled to the neighboring home of Jocelyn Slone, who looked out the window and saw Bianco running across the street, clad only in panties, with a man in pursuit. Slone saw the assault. She saw the shotgun break into three pieces. The man fled, and she went outside. ”I knew she wasn`t breathing,” Slone told police. ”(Her) head was covered with blood.”
Bianco had been struck 20 times. As she had predicted, the casket stayed closed at the funeral.
The state corrections department has blamed ”poor judgment” and
”blurred lines of authority” for its decision to grant a furlough to Matheney. The deputy commissioner, Warren Waymire, says flatly, ”It is clear (we) promised to notify Lisa Marie Bianco and (prosecutor Barnes) that Matheney was going to be let out. . . . And that didn`t happen.”
To critics, the furlough is proof that domestic violence is still not being taken seriously. Mona Mathis, a former corrections employee who now runs the shelter in South Bend, says, ”With an inmate, they always look at how lethal he is to society, whether he`ll go on a killing binge. A batterer is often a `model prisoner` who`s passive with authority figures, someone who will only explode at safe targets.”
Shelter sadly busy
Back in Mishawaka, meanwhile, Sandi Pack has signed on with the Elkhart shelter, full time. ”Why do we have to be on our knees, begging for understanding all the time? Part of me died with Lisa, but her influence is still there, and I`ll be damned if I let that die. I`ll be damned that I don`t do something with it.”
And at the shelter the other day, there was indeed much to be done. There was no time to analyze Matheney`s post-arrest remarks about his marriage
(”All I did was slap her, she was never beaten”).
There was barely time to deal with the pressing needs of the pregnant woman who wouldn`t go to the doctor because she didn`t want him to see the bruises; or the woman who needed a police escort so she could retrieve clothes from her apartment; or the woman on the phone whose ribs may have been broken but the guy wanted to go to the hospital with her and the shelter people were beseeching her to go alone.
There would never be enough time to mourn Lisa Bianco.
